Tony Stockwell is a British psychic medium, author and television personality, one of the best-known touring mediums in the UK.[1] He currently lives in Wickford, Essex.[2]
Early life and career
Stockwell was born in Walthamstow, East London.[2] His career as a medium began at age 16, after a friend invited him to a local Spiritualist church to watch another medium at work; the experience convinced him he wanted to become a medium himself.[2] He practised mediumship early in his career at the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain, and later held a certificate from the Spiritualist National Union for Teaching, Demonstrating and Speaking.[3] He teaches at the College of Psychic Studies in South Kensington, London, and regularly at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, alongside centres in Australia and the United States.[4]
Television career
Stockwell has fronted four of his own television series — The Psychic Detective, Street Psychic, Psychic School, and Psychic Academy — the first three for Living TV, along with two one-off specials, Street Psychic San Francisco and The National ESP Challenge.[1] He also appeared in a 1995 ITV series, Psychic Private Eyes, alongside fellow medium Colin Fry, and later guested regularly on Fry's own show 6ixth Sense.[4] Stockwell has separately appeared alongside Derek Acorah and Colin Fry as one of "The Three Mediums", in The Best of British Mediumship — a series of live joint demonstrations with Fry that toured venues including the London Palladium from 2005 to 2007 — and made a guest appearance on Most Haunted Live 4.[1][5] In 2009 he toured the UK jointly with American medium James Van Praagh.[2]
Books and other work
Stockwell has written several books about his experiences as a medium, including his autobiography Spirited, The Psychic Case Files, Embracing Eternity and Walking with Angels, alongside a number of instructional audio programmes on mediumship development.[2] He writes regular columns for Chat — It's Fate, Spirit & Destiny, and The Psychic News.[4] He runs his own training courses for aspiring mediums, teaching regularly both in the UK and internationally.[1]
Reception
Reviewing a live Stockwell demonstration in 2023, The Skeptic magazine noted the venue's disclaimer that the event was billed "for entertainment purposes" — a framing generally understood to reference the UK's Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, which prohibited obtaining payment through claimed psychic ability except where clearly presented as entertainment.[6] The reviewer described what they characterised as competent cold reading technique, combined with what they suggested might be some pre-established knowledge of attendees, and observed that audience members' apparent threshold for accepting a reading as genuine evidence of an afterlife often appeared to require little more than a correctly guessed gender followed by general, broadly-applicable statements.[6]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "About Tony."Tony Stockwell Psychic Medium.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "Who is Tony Stockwell?."PeoplePill.
- ↑ "Tony Stockwell — Psychic Medium."College of Psychic Studies.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Tony Stockwell."Omega Institute.
- ↑ "Tony Stockwell."Southend Theatre Scene.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Tony Stockwell on tour — the dying embers of the celebrity psychic era?."The Skeptic.